Moleskine's Mini Planners are new for the 2011 planning year will be available in early summer of 2010. New colors include maroon, sky blue, lime green, navy and dark pink.

Moleskine is releasing several new products this year including a new weekly and daily Mini Planners in a variety of new colors. Sized at tiny 2¾” x 4¼”, they are slightly larger than the X-small Moleskine Volant and small enough to take with you wherever you go. They will be available in 6 colors including black, dark pink, sky blue, lime green, maroon and blue. Retail prices will be $9.99 USD for both the weekly and daily versions.

The tiny size is smaller than the length of a standard pen and will fit in almost any pocket or purse.

The weekly format is familiar, an unlined, horizontal format. While it is small in size, there is plenty of room for planning if you have only a few appoinmtents a day.

The planning formats are consistent with the mini’s larger cousins in style and layout, just smaller. The weekly format features a week spread across two pages in a open, horizontal format. There are no lines to restrict your note-taking, just blank sections separated by a line for each day.The daily format features unlined, one-page-per-day planning, but it is thicker than the weekly planner and measures nearly 1″ thick.

The daily planning format is unlined and unstructured with one-day-per-page.

All of the same convenience pages are here, too including the Time Zone Map, Travels Planning and Memo, International Dialing Codes, Yearly Calenders, International Holidays, Distances, International Sizes and a small ruler on the edge of a page.

There is a change to the monthly planning section in the front of the planner; a box style planning calendar. I much prefer the box format in this planner to the tiny, vertical monthly planning sections in the larger planners. It is easier to see a month’s planning at a glance and less rigid. With any luck the larger planners will adopt this format in the future.

Moleskine's new monthly box-style planning calenders in the front of the planner give you a view of your month at a glance.

The mini planners have the all the features that you would expect from a Moleskine notebook or planner including:

Ribbon bookmark

Expandable envelope in the back

Elastic strap does a good job of keeping the planner closed an compact

Opens flat

Protective, oilcloth cover

Acid-free paper

The expandable pocket in the back of the planner is large enough for credit cards or business cards.

Final Thoughts

These little planners are packed with a powerful planning format despite being small. There are a variety of color choices to satisfy the urge to have a unique look. The planning formats are classic Moleskine and have enough space to handle all but the busiest schedules. If you don’t carry a planner because you don’t like the extra bulk, you should consider the Moleskine line of Mini Planners. The small size is to that of an iPhone and is as convenient to carry.

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Head on over to Pocket Blonde blog for The Eighth Carnival of Pen, Pencil and Paper. This month there lots of great posts encompassing pens, pencils, inks, notebooks, and…other entertainments. Enjoy the reading, and please do invite your friends to drop ’round by posting a link to this website.

Be sure to check out the review by Margana at Inkophile as she takes a look at Clairfontaine’s French-Ruled notebooks and gives her Namiki Falcon a workout on that wonderful paper. “Clairefontaine paper is outstanding for fountain pens, dip pens and everything in between,” she notes. Quite true – a flex nib + Clairfontaine paper= fun!

The 9th Carnival of Pen, Pencil and Paper is scheduled for May 4, 2010, and will hosted by Julie (Okami) of Whatever blog. You can submit entries (either your own posts or nominations of other posts) using the Carnival submission form.